Review: Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3) by Cynthia Eden

Cassie Armstrong has plenty to atone for. The daughter of the most immoral researcher ever to pick up a scalpel, she's determined to use her own brilliance in genetics to repair the damage her family has done to the paranormals. Especially Dante, the first of the phoenixes, the one they call the Immortal. He's been haunting her dreams since she was a little girl, and she's been trying to ease his pain for almost as long. If only he remembered any of it. . .

Dante doesn't know what Cassie's story is. He almost doesn't care. The minute he sees her, all he can think is mine. But there's more to the pretty little doctor than meets the eye. And Dante isn't the only one to notice. He can't trust her, but he can't stay away--and if he wants to learn her secrets, he's going to have to fight like hell to keep them both alive.

The sins of the father… that is what Cassie is trying so desperately to atone for. She is so desperate to fix her father’s wrongs that she constantly puts herself in danger. She is striving to find a cure for all that hate their paranormal status. She has taken atonement to a pay that penance forward extreme. She even hates herself for not freeing more from labs and putting a stop to her father’s insanity long before she made those first feeble attempts. Thankfully she is not drowning in self-loathing, but she is skating its dangerous edge.

Sometimes Dante remembers Cassandra after a rising. Sometimes he just knows that the female is his. While it confuses him it breaks Cassie’s heart each time. He knows her though. He knows things about her that she doesn’t even know. He knows he wants her. He knows he must protect her at all costs. Most of all he knows without a doubt that his is his!

I have to admit there was something damn sexy about Cassie trying to convince a confused recently risen Dante that he has good happy memories of her. Cassandra wants Dante and his love with every fiber of her being. She sees so much in him that others don’t see. She wants his pain to stop. She wants to see his smiles and know his laughter. Dante wants to give that all to her, he just has to clear their obstacles out of the way first and he knows his phoenix fire can do just that.

I have to point out the top reason to read Playing with Fire is the phoenix origin and Dante’s history among them. He is known as The Immortal for a reason and Cynthia puts his tragic past down on paper for us. The origin and history were perfectly done. The tragic past that Dante has is never the focal so readers don’t get lost in his torture. It all played out well for this story though.